Taiwan Leader's Party Ekes Out Win

By KEITH BRADSHER; Ng Tze-wei contributed reporting from Taipei.

Published: December 9, 2006

President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party eked out the narrowest victory in Taiwanese political history in crucial mayoral elections here on Saturday, but the opposition Nationalist Party quickly said it would seek a recount.

The Central Election Commission in Taipei announced that with all ballots counted, the Democratic Progressive Party candidate in Kaohsiung had won by 1,120 votes out of more than 760,000 cast, a victory margin of 14 hundredths of a percent. On an island with already deep political divisions, the narrow margin and the possibility of a court fight are likely to cause further political friction in the weeks ahead.

Joanna Lei, a senior Nationalist lawmaker, said that party officials would ask the municipal election commission here to conduct a recount. Municipal election commissions have the discretion whether to order recounts when the outcome is decided by less than 1 percent of the vote.

Taiwan's legislature discussed whether to require recounts in close elections after President Chen narrowly won reelection in 2004, but never acted on the idea.

Both parties also threatened to sue each other in district court here on Monday, and began demanding that all ballot papers and other records be sealed at the courthouse here.

Democratic Progressive Party officials accused the Nationalists late Friday night and today of paying people to attend a rally on Friday night. The Nationalists denied the accusations and said they violated a law that bars politicians and parties from making any statements that may influence the outcome after 10 p.m. the night before the polls open.

Even before the polls closed, the authorities here prepared for a close election by assembling a dozen busloads of riot police and heavy steel barriers fringed with barbed wire to defend the courthouse, where ballots are sent after an initial count in polling districts. Kaohsiung has a history of violent street protests.

But local Nationalists appeared more stunned than angry, and the streets around the courthouse were quiet on Saturday evening. Police officers at the courthouse sat on the pavement next to their riot shields or snoozed on the nearby buses.

The Nationalist Party had sought to turn mayoral elections here and in Taipei on Saturday into an informal referendum on President Chen, who has been dogged by allegations that his family has committed financial impropriety.

A Nationalist Party candidate, Hau Lung-bin, won the election in Taipei by a wide margin. But he had been expected to win because northern Taiwan, including Taipei, tends to support Nationalist candidates while southern Taiwan, including Kaohsiung, more often votes for Democratic Progressive Party candidates.

While Saturday's vote represented a reprieve of sorts for President Chen, it may have also strengthened the Nationalist Party, which favors closer relations with mainland China. James Soong, a former Nationalist who split with the party and set up a rival party catering to like-minded voters, the People First Party, ran as an independent in the Taipei mayoral race but attracted just 4 percent of the vote.

Mr. Soong announced after the count that he would leave politics, which could clear the way for the People First Party to combine with the Nationalists, a move the two parties have been negotiating off and on for at least three years.

Taiwan uses paper ballots, with the voter expected to stamp with red ink a number corresponding to the preferred candidate. The vote count showed Chen Chu, the Democratic Progressive Party candidate here, with 379,417 votes, compared to 378,297 for Huang Chun-ying, the Nationalist candidate.

Three minor candidates together won another 10,148 votes. Their numbers appeared on the ballot between Mr. Huang, number 1 and Ms. Chen, number 5, making it less likely that voters could stamp their ballots for the wrong major candidate unintentionally.

Corruption allegations involving Taiwan's first family were at the center of the campaign here. Jerry Huang, 25, said after voting here that he had supported the Nationalist candidate because, ''They are cleaner, and to me, being not corrupt is most important.''

Other voters were annoyed by the constant wrangling between the parties. ''I don't think either is very reliable,'' said Grace Chen, who brought her six-year-old daughter with her to her neighborhood polling place, in a high school. Ms. Chen said before voting that she supported the Democratic Progressive Party because it seemed more interested in strengthening the economy.

Mr. Huang, the Nationalist candidate here, said in an interview on Friday that the mayoral race here would have an effect on island-wide legislative elections here in December next year, and on presidential elections to be held in March, 2008. But the race here has also turned on local issues, he cautioned.

Philip Yang, a political science professor at National Taiwan University, said that Mr. Huang's reluctance to wage a negative campaign and emphasize corruption allegations may have cost him the election.

Mr. Huang did better in opinion polls than the actual vote, suggesting that he may not have done enough to build a sense of outrage about corruption that would bring voters to polling places, Mr. Yang said. Voter turnout in Kaohsiung, at 67.93 percent of eligible voters, was lower than usual by the standards of Taiwan's highly participatory democracy.

The Democratic Progressive Party candidate, Chen Chu, campaigned on her party's environmental record, which includes cleaning up the poetically named Love River, which flows through the center of the city. Once heavily polluted with industrial waste, it is now so clean that fishermen were casting lines into it today as workers began erecting the riot barricades around the courthouse.